Forum posts by Htlaps

Hi Annelle,

your understanding of tone is really good! It certainly adds something to each of these sketches.

otherwise, my first critique would be to have a little confidence in your strokes. One fine line will tell you much more about your skills of accuracy etc than many smaller lines. While having many lines can make the eye believe that one of them is more accurate, the skill lies in drawing just that one correct line.

it will take many tries, but the best advice i've ever gotten is that in art practice, it's quantity over quality. For example, if you drew that upper right image over and over (30-60 seconds each) , the first few ones might look wonky or unfinished. But by the tenth or fifteenth one you'll have a much better grasp of it. So do whatever you can to increase your reps. If that means going faster, being messy, or having it look "wonky", that's just fine. Because it's the practice that counts, not the end product.

fantastic work!

best,

David

Hello,

Pictured here is 15 minutes of expression practice. Each sketch took me a minute.

My current goal is to be more accurate, gain a better understanding of proportion, and reduce the amount of time it takes for me to "get it right".

thanks everyone!

Hi Olivia,

Just out of habit, i usually start with the head. This is simplest for me because it's a basic shape that still gives me a lot of information about how to proportion the rest of the features. For examples, when i start with the head that tells me how big the body should be in relation to it, and then the arms + hands and legs + feet.

Best,

David

Hi Olivia,

your style shines through each of your sketches. I see a clear inclination towards geometric shape, and i think that would be an excellent thing to prioritize as you continue sketching. Visualizing the torso, head, and each limb as a shape first and a "correct-looking" body part second is a large part of what to take away from figure drawing.

As for critique, i'm noticing some of the gestures look a bit disjointed, or lacking "flow". In order to unify each gesture, it may help to view each figure in order of simple shapes from biggest to smallest. The largest of these shapes may be things like the torso as a squashed square, widening at the shoulders or the hips, while the smallest may be a foot represented by a wonky trapezoid.

Here's a simple representation of what i mean by this.

Thanks for posting your beautiful work!

david

Hey guys,

first off, i am a huge fan of this new feature! Fantastic for warming up observation skills, and i'm definitely in the headspace of being able to visualize three-dimensional shapes after doing 15 minutes of practice. 60 seconds each scene.

here's my first attempt. One thing that i'm working on is being able to accurately measure spaces between objects, sizes of different objects in relation to each other, proper proportions etc. In IRL still life drawing is a bit easier as i can measure with a pencil/ frame the scene, other art tricks. But while working from a digital image it's a bit more difficult.

thanks everyone, and happy drawing :)

• Htlaps edited this post on August 8, 2023 4:37am.
• Htlaps edited this post on August 8, 2023 4:39am.
• Htlaps edited this post on August 8, 2023 4:39am.

Hi Meihum! Wow, your art shows a great deal of understanding when it comes to contrast and specific details like hair. This is definitely attributed to your experience with detailed animal drawing! Really cool stuff.

You seem to be really interested in drawing portraits, which also tend to be pretty detailed. Some things that could be helpful for you may be doing studies of the musculature of the face and the skull underneath, and studying how it can move for different expressions. While doing this, it may be useful to consider the three-dimensionality of these muscles. Your own face is a very valuable resource for this! (You could also ask a friend to model for you). After you check out the muscles of the face, Try drawing different expressions using your own face as a reference and check out how they move to create different expressions and planes.

some other excellent resources that may help you in your journey to portrait drawing are the loomis head and the asaro head . After getting used to these simple guidelines you may find that your understanding of the forms of the face and head improve by quite a lot, and your understanding of detail and contrast will really come through.

best of luck, i hope this critique is helpful :)

Here's the pic

these ones feel a little sloppy to me, they're my first drawings of the day. Kind of a warmup, really. I focused on the shapes of each form, I'd really like to add a lot more weight to each form, if anyone has any tips to enhance my work i'd really like feedback :) even if it isn't much, a little goes a long way!

It might be a good idea to start blocking out the specific shapes of each form before adding on any other detail, working off of the form of the musculature on the human skeleton as a basis. For example, the muscles in the arm make very distinct interlocking shapes, and so does the muscle of the torso. It may help to do studies of the different muscle groups of the human body by looking at a 3D model or yourself in the mirror. It's important to get the 3D shapes down because it'll add a lot more dimensionality and believability to each form you draw, and can even help with perspective. If you're having trouble with complex 3D shapes it may be helpful to do some turnaround studies of simple 3D shapes such as a cube or a cylinder. These are some studies that actually helped me a lot, so i hope they are enlightening for you too :)

That sounds like a really interesting exercise, thank you! And I'll be sure to try pushing the exaggeration even further to add more character to my art.

Here's the pic

i focused on rendering the 3D shapes of each form rather than using a flat, symbolic representation of the features. I also tried to show a lot of motion in each study using a line of action. Does anybody have any tips for how I can improve my understanding of anatomy even more, add more character to my art , or show more expression? I would really like to challenge myself, I feel like I've hit a wall artistically.

you seem to have a really good idea of the form of the human body, but one thing I noticed is that it all seems to fit together kind of... loosely, for lack of a better term. Maybe it would be helpful to study the exact musculature on the body so that the form can fit together more tightly.

Hi!

some things you may find helpful at this stage would be visualizing the human body as a collection of 3D shapes, which is what it is in reality. You could practice drawing different 3D shapes in different positions, such as a cube from all different angles, like a turnaround. Then, shapes like tubes and pyramids. Being able to visualize 3D shapes and apply them to your understanding of form can be really helpful in making your understanding of anatomy more cohesive.

if this is difficult for you, you may also find it helpful to picture the human body as a collection of two-dimensional shapes. Such as, a loose trapezoid for the chest area, and rounded rectangles for thighs. Once you get these rules of form down you'll find it much easier to create more cohesive form in your studies.

It may be helpful for you to picture the overall shape of different body parts as a guideline for the features on them. Such as, a (very loose) trapezoid for the chest area. This may help you visualize the human body as a collection of shapes. Once you get good at this, you can continue refining the details.

I'd suggest studying the human skeleton and musculature so that you get a good sense of how the body parts interlink, and how weight is held. You have a very strong sense of shape, though, and in a non-realism art style that could be really cool to see developed.

I might suggest a different pen, maybe one that allows for better line weight so you can quickly do a light sketch then go and define the most important points. Might also want to turn down the stabilizer to make the process a little harder on you, if you feel like going beastmode